Dive Brief:

• Salesforce and the Harvard Business Review Analytics Services surveyed 556 global marketing leaders on technology and found that just 56% reported technology is extremely important at every phase of the marketing and sales pipeline. 
• Only 23% of respondents said they use technology extensively to manage customer relationships and 38% said they fully integrate sales data into CRM and marketing automation systems.
• At the same time, 70% said the ability to integrate different technology pieces, such as marketing systems, within an enterprise’s IT network is extremely important to delivering a consistent, seamless experience to customers.

Dive Insight:

Technology is quickly becoming essential to the marketing role, but many marketers acknowledge that their capabilities are lagging behind. 

One of the major values of marketing technology is the ability to score leads and create a pipeline of marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. However, 80% of marketing leaders surveyed said they do not have automation in place to qualify leads, while 47% of marketers without lead qualification systems just send all leads straight to the sales team.

For the B2B complex sale, this builds a process where the marketing team nurtures leads after lead generation activities until they are ready to passed along to the sales team — then defined as sales qualified leads at that point. That makes it so the sales team is only spending time on the highest value prospects while the marketing team is providing relevant content and messaging to marketing qualified leads through email and other tactics, scoring each individual until they reach the sales qualified level.

This process is dependent on technology to track and score every lead uncovered during demand generation campaigns. The Salesforce and Harvard Business Review Analytics Services report underscores both the value and challenge inherent with marketing technologies in today’s digital world.